love after love

i am watching the sunset in bangkok. the orange pink of the sky over the river is rather embracing somehow. nice to feel embraced this evening, even if i am enjoying this particular sunset solo. and am in fact about to embark upon a solo holiday in koh samui. and am especially looking forward to it. i caught up with an old friend last night over a delightful dinner and he mentioned wanting to put me in touch with friends of his in koh samui. i found myself hesitating and feeling rather protective of my as yet unentered private space. even before i've arrived. but i consented to at least getting their contact information. i may end up finding myself bored with so much time on my own and may welcome a meal with others. SJ, this spectacular sunset just became even more breathtaking. i feel even more deeply embraced. i've endured the few days of this work conference, which were hardly embracing, so it's about time*. this conference was focused on regional efforts at improving environmental adjudication so was basically a collection of asian judges + me. there was one chinese judge participating, a woman i'd previously met through some of our programs. she doesn't really speak english, which resulted in my serving as an interpreter for a substantial portion of the past three days. it was tiring. i sometimes question the value of these regional forums as much time seems to be swallowed by descriptions of the circumstances in each country leaving little time to more deeply delve into issues of common concern or challenges or learning points. but so goes the world. i endured. and will soon be moving on. in more ways than one. i gave notice today. and accepted a new job. i ought to be sipping a cocktail called 'momentum' now. doing so at our housewarming party in may was perhaps premature. or not. that was perhaps the beginning of the arc of this particular rainbow.

and perhaps saying i've endured is a bit too much. there have been some lovely moments of late. watching a blue boat sail past and seeing a sundrenched old man enjoying a beer as he floated by. seeing a fish flip up and wave hello with a fin. eating amazing curry and mango sticky rice. laughing with an environmental judge from australia about moments of cultural relativism. and laughing even harder with my high school friend about our teenage antics. and angst. and merriment. and more. my how we've grown. and my how i have. of course in catching up on the last ten years i talked about heartache and trauma, disappointment and pain. but there was also so much joy and beauty and light and love. so much love. there always is. just below every surface, like the sweet fish who surprise splashed me hello. i found myself describing my enduring faith. especially my faith in love. even if for now i am only embraced by sunsets. every time that my heart is shattered, i respond by finding a way to continue to believe and be open-hearted. continue to love and give. and that is perhaps all one can ask of life. the opportunity to love, even after love. cher once sagely asked 'do you believe in love after love'?** i can unequivocally answer yes! onwards.



*it's also about time for a real embrace, but there's little to nothing i can do about that. and so.

**ok, so i know the line actually is 'do you believe in life after love', but i'm taking artistic license here. and besides, doesn't life = love?

doing it beautifully

so our stretch of sweet, serene blue sky days and sparkly summer evenings under the stars in the courtyard have come to a close. here in the northern capital we are once again firmly embraced by filth. in the form of pollution, naturally (or rather unnaturally), and also just general dirt and squalor. now i too have been known to swoon over the quiet joys of hutong living, but sometimes i fail to see the romance. this morning was one of those times. as i walked down the alley to the bus stop, i found myself doing the using winding dance avoiding filth in various forms and thinking whether hutong life is less about poetry and more about poo. literally. all over the place. and piles of dirt. and having to see underwear in public a lot. although that may just be a china thing. airing your laundry - even your intimates - in public spaces is quite acceptable. it's unfortunate that all of these knickers kicking it about town seem to be unsightly. almost without fail they are old, enormous, yellowing, and one wear shy of unravelling. you beijingren out there know exactly what i'm talking about. why? i ask you, why? then again, maybe in my fretting about underwear aesthetics, i am missing some profounder truth hidden in all the (over)exposed panties*. isn't god a shout in the street? shouldn't we be able to find enlightenment in the everyday? maybe the answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind. and maybe the answer is enormous underwear. (of course, i might need to work out the question first.)

anyway, after enduring aesthetic, aural and olfactory assualts in the alley, i boarded a bus that had clearly pulled up to our humble stop straight out of an orson scott card novel**. our driver may or may not have been engaged in some sort of intergalactic space battle in a dimension the rest of us could not access or see. seriously. i think i have bruises from being tossed about so much. there were at least two moments when i felt quite certain i was on the verge of death or serious bodily injury. in those moments i both cursed myself for wearing gorgeous patent leather stilettos this morning and congratulated myself for going down in style. i found myself thinking of hedda gabler's immortal line, 'do it beautifully', urging a man to commit suicide in style. and so.

and so i've decided that doing it beautifully is a healthy approach to all things. even if the origin of this particular mantra is perhaps less than healthy. i strolled down the alley in my stilettos humming along to the jazz*** on my ipod, sidestepping the sh*t and gracefully avoiding pantie attacks, beautifully. and today i shall beautifully attempt not to be disheartened about the ever-shrinking space for human rights advocacy in this (filthy) country. and i shall also beautifully contemplate a possible career shift that would allow me to continue to work on the issues i care about, but from an altered (and perhaps safer more generative) angle.

actually, maybe that's the answer.
(who needs the question?)

do it beautifully.



*and i am ostensibly into finding beauty in unexpected places!

**i am generally not much of a science fiction fan, but absolutely love ender's game, and then next 2-3 books in the series. i think it falls off after that. if you haven't read it, get thee to a bookstore or library or website (so many options in the modern world! (too many?))! oh and again, not trying to be bossy. just spreading sunshine. very necessary on this grey day.

***sometimes i love jazz so much i wish i could eat it.

beauty in unexpected places

so my usual searching for beauty in unexpected places is more meaningful than my stories shall be this evening. a thousand pardons. translation: this will be a silly post. possibly even nonsensical. but so life has seemed of late, and so it is only appropriate.

why nonsensical? let's just say that the narrative arc of my saturday night opened and closed on stationary, unseaworthy boats. yes, two distinct and distinctive boats that were bearing me nowhere fast.* saturday was another glorious bright, bright sunshiney day in beijing. (i seriously think i'm getting a little drunk from soaking up all this sunshine. loving it.) i spent a good portion of the day wandering around enjoying it. and also shopping for the perfect commifabulous old bicycle with a friend. we did a lot of looking, discussing, and even some riding, but neither of us ended up with wheels. oh well. it was a pleasant enough day. the evening began with sweet sunset drinks at a bar called the stone boat in ritan park. the bar is - wait for it - a stone boat sitting in one of the park's man-made lakes. not exactly into the wild, but about as close to nature as we can get in beijing. and it's a charming, mellow place. a beautiful way to begin the evening. the night unfolded from there. it ended at the (re)opening party for a bar / club inside a stationary boat in the liangmahe canal. there had been a boat bar there for sometime called - wait for it - the boat. but it didn't do particularly well and so was closed, renovated and reopened as - again, wait for it - showboat.

showboat was quite a show. the interior was all white leather (great plan) and glass and an attempt to be sleek and classy that only succeeded in looking a bit trite. two levels on the inside, with a balcony overlooking a dancefloor.** the party was apparently exclusive / required invitations, but we sailed in somehow. once inside, it was clear that certain partygoers were being paid to be aboard. beijing simply doesn't have that many beautiful people. nor does it have many models dressed as sailors or in stylish nautical attire. the female models all seemed to be russian. the male models were more diverse and were hot, hot, hot. and yet. i fear they were also flaming, flaming, flaming. one outrageously gorgeous man in a blue-and-white striped naughty nautical top and fitted white trousers would periodically wink at me when he passed while sauntering about the ship looking beautiful. one of my guy friends noticed this and asked why i wasn't winking in return or otherwise responding. i politely explained that, given how his outfit coordinated with the attire of the other too-hot-to-handle men in the room, i suspected that he was being paid to saunter by and wink at me. i also couldn't help but notice that he was rather more friendly with one of the sailors on the dancefloor. still, having a hot man wink at me was rather an improvement over other recent nights out in the northern capital, even if he was gay and winking at me was in his job description. the winking was not, however, the highlight of the evening. that was most definitely when a girlfriend and i stumbled into the private ktv room in the upstairs bow of the ship. it was also all white-leather tackiness. so inviting! two chinese women walked in while we were selecting a song and sat down. we went with britney's 'toxic'. probably an appropriate choice given all the fumes from the fresh paint we were inhaling. we performed with aplomb. but it wasn't pretty. so consumed were we in the song that we failed to notice the steadily-growing crowd that was swelling into the room behind us. that is, until i turned to my left and realised that we had an audience of twenty. i caught my friend's eye mid-note. she whispered, "three,two,one and we bolt?" i nodded. i sang, "i'm addicted to you"; she sang, "don't you know that you're toxic?, three, two, one". and we whirled around, dropped the mics on the table, and fled.

when we rejoined our friends, it seemed that escape was on everyone's minds. slowly the beautiful partygoers were noticing that showboat was more show than boat and it was decidedly leaning or tilting to one side. this does not inspire confidence. especially when people are vigorously dancing. there were serious-ish conversations about whether we might be sinking. one friend shared the escape route he had already mapped out for when the great ship went down. it was a pretty detailed plan, actually. he's an over-thinker so this isn't surprising. he was worried about his obituary describing his death by drowning on a tacky club boat in the liangmahe canal*** in beijing. i asked that him to promise that he would take me with him when he escaped and then abruptly ended the conversation, explaining that i had just recovered from being afraid of dying in a fire and couldn't mix water or drowning into my trauma cocktail. instead, we had another actual cocktail and clung to the railing to stay straight as the showboat tilted even further.

the showboat scene behind me, i learned about an even more entertaining activity involving beijing's beautiful people over sunday afternoon tea with some friends. in this case, however, the beautiful people must pay to participate rather than be paid to look pretty. ladies and gentlemen, in less than two weeks, the miss laowai china competition will be held in beijing. i'm not even making this up, ahem: http://www.misslaowaichina.org/. SJ. i learned about this show via a (gay) guy friend who suggested that i enter as a way to put myself out there and meet eligible bachelors in beijing. this was before, mind, we visited the website or really knew anything about it. he had only heard that it existed. when we discovered that it is being held in the same theatre where i graduated from high school, he and our other friend really implored me to enter because i would have a leg up on the competition, being familiar with the stage already. i said that although i found the pageant's mission statement suitably inspiring, goal-oriented young woman interested in Things Chinese that i am, i didn't think i could go about flaunting my kindred spirit in public, much less on stage. here's the relevant portion of the statement (although there's more where this comes from):

Miss Laowai China Pageant is a cultural exchange platform organized at this magnitude to encompass the interest of both Chinese and Foreigners in China. While it calls for participation of female foreigners in China, its main aim is to promote friendship and understanding of the way of life in China through the eyes of foreign beauty and revealed in talent about Things Chinese. This platform allows the women to show how savoir-faire they are in China life. In their daily life they are goal-oriented and aware of the importance of Chinese culture on the global scale. Therefore, delegates who become part of the Miss Laowai China Organization will display the characteristics and aspirations from their everyday lives. Miss Laowai China is therefore a conduit through which they will compete with hope of advancing their careers, personal and humanitarian goals, and also release their kindred spirit to improve the lives of others.

as sunday afternoon turned into evening and we continued to smile at life over coffees and ice creams, i couldn't help but marvel about all the unexpected beauty this city has to offer. even if it's a little toxic. ahh, beauty with chinese characteristics.



*i wonder if there is an allegory somewhere in spending my night on useless vessels. maybe. for some reason, i am recalling a conversation i had while back visiting friends in nyc recently. one of my girlfriends made a comment about our lives being like "sex & the city". i replied that the t.v. show version of my dating life would be more along the lines of "magical thinking alone in my room". maybe i recall the comment now when thinking about the boats because of the common lack of movement. although i am somewhat encouraged at the thought that the t.v. show title is not "magical thinking alone going nowhere fast on a useless vessel". although i suppose it might as well be. at least i wasn't alone on saturday. and had a great time.

**apparently there was also a roofdeck. and there was fried chicken there. i discovered neither. had i found either fresh air or food i may have lasted longer than i did. at around 2:30 a.m. my interest in snacks overtook my interest in half-dancing to house music and misplacing my decidedly mediocre drinks, so i called it a night.

***the liangmahe canal is filthy and an insult to bodies of water everywhere. so polluted i think even describing it as green or brown is an insult to colours, i don't think a living creature has been found in it for decades. well, aside from the old men who still insist in swimming there. but that's another matter entirely. seriously, it's disgusting.